Rosa Bonheur's workshop is far away from the breweries of Mont Breda, or the chestnuts of the Luxembourg. You must take the Lyons line; get out at Fontainebleau, and ask the first individual you meet the road to Chateau By. After an hour's walk, in a thick wood, you perceive at an opening of the Thourmery woods an airy-looking building, in which the architect has combined iron, brick, and wood with rare artistic taste. From the cellar to the roof everything is graceful and coquettish in this miniature castle. Its irregularity is its greatest charm, and your eyes could feast all day on the turrets hung with ivy and the balconies entwined with honeysuckle, if your ears did not ring with a peculiar harmony which detracts from your admiration. You imagine that in the barn near by an Orpheus transformed into an animal is chanting forth a chorus of Richard Wagner's; but, after listening attentively, this strange concert is found to proceed
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A poor lady artist, who had been coldly repulsed by several rich men of her own profession, to whom, in her extreme distress, she had reluctantly applied for assistance, went at last to Rosa Bonheur, who immediately took down a small but valuable painting from her study wall, and insisted upon her accepting it, by which a very considerable sum of money was raised.
A young sculptor, who was an ardent admirer of her genius, addressed her a modest note enclosing a bill for a hundred francs, which, he said, was all he possessed, asking her if she would send him a little drawing of the value of the bill.
The same evening she returned to him his bill accompanied by an exquisite sketch estimated to be worth at least a thousand francs.
We would close this brief account of her life, by quoting from a graphic description, recently written by a Paris newspaper correspondent, of Rosa Bonheur and her country home:--
S. M. Betts and Company. Hartford, Conn. 1871.
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